Keys to the City: Music Film Celebrates New Orleans’ Piano Professor

Rock ‘n’ roll was born in Memphis. Everybody knows that, right? Sam Phillips prayed for a white man who could sing like a black man, so God smote Sun Studio and up popped Elvis Presley playing “That’s Alright Mama.”

Or something like that. Like most origin stories, it’s not quite that simple. Not to deny the Bluff City its due, but rock ‘n’ roll had many mothers, and if any other can stake a Memphis-grade claim as a cradle of rock, it’s New Orleans. There the key ingredient wasn’t guitar twang but piano shuffle, with roots in boogie-woogie and the blues, the sound Fats Domino, Huey “Piano” Smith, and Cosimo Matassa imprinted on early rock ‘n’ roll. And nowhere do the roots show more than in the subject of Kickstarter music documentary project Professor Longhair: Making a Gumbo.

Born Henry Roeland Byrd in 1918, known to friends and admirers as Fess, Longhair was a one-of-a-kind singer and pianist whose rumba-spiced boogie on tracks like “Big Chief,” “Tipitina,” and “Go to the Mardi Gras.” defined a key strain of the freewheeling Crescent City sound. Allen Touissant and Dr. John were Longhair’s students, the Meters and the Neville Brothers his inheritors, Paul McCartney a rabid fan. As for the Memphis thing, infamous rock-myth-deconstructor Albert Goldman wrote that “Professor Longhair gave Elvis Presley his blue suede shoes voice and the arrangements gave producer Sam Phillips the sound.”

That might be a tiny bit reductive; Goldman’s judgments did tend toward the sweeping. But he’s right on in placing Longhair in the pantheon of elder gods who laid the groundwork for rock ‘n’ roll, not to mention R&B and funk – “the high priest of it all,” as Dr. John called him. Nearly 35 years after Longhair’s death, “we need to preserve this history before its gone,” co-producer Spencer Leven notes on the Making a Gumbo campaign page. That means a lot of interviews, a lot of travel, a lot of research, and a lot of licensing of music, footage, and photos.

Leven and director Josh Bagnall, a “lifelong Fess fan,” are longtime business partners with deep roots in music video, live production, and tour films. Even more encouragingly, New Orleans-based filmmaker Lily Keber is on board as co-producer – she of Bayou Maharajah: The Tragic Genius of James Booker, a doc on another noted New Orleans ivory-stroker that was one of my favorite music films of 2013. Nearly a year into production, they’re looking to raise $15,000 by December 19 to complete shooting; anything they take in beyond the goal will be plowed straight into post. It’s time the high priest had a cinematic altar. Click on the widget to contribute or learn more.